What do you think of the 2021 Pantone Color(s) of the Year? (Me? Meh.)

The Pantone Color Institute picked yellow (‘Illuminating’) and grey (‘Ultimate Gray’) for its colours this year. (It’s not the first time they’ve chosen two instead of one; in 2016 they selected baby pink and baby blue (sorry… ‘Rose Quartz’ and ‘Serenity’). Ugh.)

Anyways… I figured I’d try the yellow/grey combo in a design! I’m always on the lookout for new colour combinations. (And the first quilt I ever made was in yellow and grey prints, so I have a soft spot for this palette.)

I’ve been experimenting with block-based designs based on only two blocks – it’s an interesting visual exercise, and a good way to find unexpected secondary shapes.

I’m always fascinated by how colouring a design differently can give a quilt pattern a whole new look. But what’s great about this design is that colouring the pieces in the same way, but in a different palette, also produces a different effect. In the version above, the grey diamonds create a ripple effect of concentric (almost) circles. But in the version below, when the colours are switched, the white diamonds don’t have quite the same effect.

But this design is also a perfect example of how colouring the pieces differently can create a completely different look and feel. I added another 2 rows and columns of alternating blocks to the design below, but it’s the same checkerboard arrangement of only 2 blocks. It somehow seems a bit more complicated when colours are split between blocks, pulling some together and pushing others apart.

And we can complicate things even further…

Look at all that movement! And all of it comes from colour placement; it’s the exact same design as the version before it. I love it!

This design could be made into a quilt quite easily, as it’s just 2 square blocks repeated in an alternating arrangement. One block comprises 2 diamond shapes (or 4 triangle-in-a-square units). The other block is a cross block with a square in the middle, which could be constructed in a number of ways.